Hrm ... maybe I'm crazy and this is just a tad bit radical, but here goes nothing!
I would like to see a return of infrared. Maybe a miniture robot could start moving through the field randomly (or controlled actively by FIRST officials) once some task is performed by a robot. This "mini bot" would have an IR beacon on it, and its release would kick the robots into autonomous mode. The goal would be to somehow capture the mini bot, possibly having to place it in some recepticle. Control could then return to the operators, or maybe there could be some other task to perform.
Now programming a robot to follow another robot and capture it wouldn't be easy, and might present a barrier for some teams, I admit (although I can't think of anything funner than trying to do this!) The twist that I like to this idea, though, and what helps to eliminate that barrier is the activation of auto mode. Maybe a robot has to enter into some zone on the playing field, or knock off a ball similar to this year. A robot which didn't have an auto mode could be designed defensively to stop the activation of auto mode. It would also be interesting strategically ... the best teams would be able to start in auto mode from anywhere, while those still stubborn enough to rely on dead reckoning would want to be sure they were at a certain spot when auto mode is activated (presuming there's some other minor task beside capturing the robot ... although I suppose a dead reckoning bot might also randomly go about trying to capture the mini bot, but then the starting position wouldn't be so important).
Well, I told you it was crazy
